What were they thinking: Motorized ice cream cone

Back to the weird and wacky patents and with this one the inventor clearly needs a few additional ideas. Can you help?

I know, summer is over for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, but I had to bring this invention to your attention, just so that you can sort out licensing and make the product in time for next year. Now when I eat an ice cream – the soft type that comes in a cone – it normally starts life as a piled extruded tube of ice cream that makes a sort of undulating cone on top. I think I, like most people, then smooth it out with my tongue as part of the eating process. Yes there are some that just eat from the top down, but my mouth is not big enough for that eating technique and I finish up with ice cream all over my face.

This invention is for a hand-held motorized cup spinner for supporting, containing, rotating and sculpting an individual portion of ice cream while it is being consumed – or in other words make sure my licking never manages to make the ice cream smooth. Is this somehow meant to help me?

In fact in the description the inventor – one Richard Hartman of Issaquah, Washington (US Pat. 5,971,829) says:

Because the act of eating an ice cream cone has traditionally been performed by holding a scoop of ice cream largely stationary in one's hand relative to the continuous licking movements of one's tongue, the appeal of a device that basically reverses this procedure -- that is, continuously moves the ice cream portion while one's tongue is held in a relatively stationary position -- has been largely overlooked. However, it can be seen that such a device is enormously entertaining, extends the natural enjoyment and creative play possibilities of eating ice cream and similarly malleable foods and enhances the overall experience of eating such foods for young children and adults alike.

Now I think the really funny part comes in the claims:

Claim 5: The rotating means of claim 1 further including an electric circuit, said electric circuit including an electric motor, a source of electrical energy and a switching means for completing said electric circuit and activating said electric motor.

Claim 6: The electric circuit of claim 5 wherein said source of electrical energy consists of one or more batteries.

OK – what other forms of electrical energy might we put I here? Give me your best shot.

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Hey guys, the patent record is rife with patents that are just amazing that way. A few years ago I spent a lot of time searching patents and came upon this one: 4,145,028. Those of you who are deer hunters will just love it! Consider for a moment what is likely to happen when someone in some moderately hunted area starts his engine!

I see the inventor has thought this through. I notice a set of 6 gears to really gear down the motor, presumably to get the number of ice-cream revolutions per minute to a marketable level.
But I see an obvious problem with this device. What happens when the ice-cream is licked down to the lip (33)? There's no easy to way to get at the ice-cream below that level. With a real ice-cream cone, this problem doesn't exist because you start eating the cone.
Perhaps the biggest flaw of this device is all that mechanism limits the amount of ice-cream you can have. In a real ice-cream cone, delicious ice-cream occupies the space taken by the battery, motor, gears and switch. I doubt consumers would want to pay *more* get *less*.

I prefer the old fashioned technique of lick and turn. How lazy do you have to be to need a motorised gizmo? We really need to keep people active to reduce obesity.
Now if you made them run to keep the power to the motor, then you might have something.
Just my opinion.